Newsweek's just-released list of 2,000 best schools in the nation includes five local high schools.

Rhinebeck High is ranked at No. 372, Red Hook is at 558, New Paltz is at 1,381, Onteora is at 1,610, and Highland is at 1,687.

Rhinebeck High School jumped from being ranked 789th a year ago, which district Superintendent Joseph Phelan attributed to preparing students for high school before they reach ninth grade.

"It's really a positive reflection of efforts over a long period of time and is a K-through-12 metric as far as I'm concerned," he said. "It didn't just happen in our high school but is the cumulative effective of 13 years of doing with the right reasons in mind."

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Newsweek's rankings are based on graduation rates, college acceptance rates, the percentage of college-bound students and scores on Advance Placement (AP) tests, SATs and ACTs.

Noting that Rhinebeck High has made the list six years in a row, Phelan said: "I think while our continued place on the list might be interpreted as an improvement, it might be reflective of the things we've been doing over a lot of time.

"There is no one program or initiative that we plugged in last year or six years ago that has anything to do with this ranking," he added. "We've been doing this for a long time, and it's been a lot of hard work on the part of students and staff to increase student achievement through improved teaching, with a lot of support by our parents and our community."

Phelan said the ranking is good for morale in the district but has no real tangible benefits.

"It's a nice 'atta boy' for the district," he said. "... It lets us know that, certainly, we're heading in the right direction and gives us encouragement to keep doing that.

"We've added a number of AP courses over the span of the last several years, and we have more kids taking AP courses, and we have a pretty good success rate," the superintendent added. "I think it's reflected in the metric that Newsweek uses, so that's an indication that offering more challenging course work to more of our kids is resulting in success for our kids."